


The Mind Has Mazes

by Winter_of_our_Discontent



Series: Mythology, Assemble! [1]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Greek Mythology - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-09-11
Packaged: 2017-11-10 16:38:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winter_of_our_Discontent/pseuds/Winter_of_our_Discontent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Through the machinations of his late father’s regent, Tony has been sent as Athen’s annual tribute to the Labyrinth at Knossos. If he wants to escape, he’s going to have to solve the maze’s mysteries, and the biggest one is that of the monster at its center. Movieverse!Avengers/Greek Mythology fusion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt writing anything Avengers, let me know how I’m doing, whether this is a thing I ought to keep doing, and ways in which I can do it better. Since I’m setting it in an explicitly mythological Greek rather than historical Greek setting, historical accuracy was not a priority, honestly, considering I’m crossing it with Marvel it’s pretty much an impossibility, though I’ve tried to avoid anything distractingly anachronistic. Special thanks to my crack team of beta ninjas, though any remaining mistakes are entirely my own.

“Whoa there, whoa, watch the goods…” Tony protested as the soldiers shoved him through the narrow stone entrance. “Okay, getting a little too friendly with those spear ends… I’m going, I’m going, Labyrinth ahead, yes, that was the…” The boulder was rolled into place behind him with a loud groan. “...deal.”

He ripped the blindfold off, which made no appreciable difference in visibility.

Okay, so he was here, Labyrinth, trapped, darkness, no light, carnivorous monster ahead… 

Well, maybe not _no_ light.

He lifted his red chiton and carefully unwrapped the long roll of fabric from around his torso. Hot as Hades, already half soaked through with sweat, but the wool layer stopped anyone from noticing the blue glow coming from the center of his chest. 

People tended to be a bit odd about the glow. Of course, they weren’t trapped in a maze without an oil lamp, so fuck ‘em.

His immediate surroundings were now bathed in a faint blue light as he rifled around in the fabric for the other things he’d managed to smuggle in. Dried fruit, wire, a small knife, string, some tools. It wasn’t a king’s ransom, but he’d done worse with less.

Some creative tearing, folding, and tying later, and the fabric had become a sack he could sling over his shoulder, though the knife stayed out and in his hand. Tony swung the sack back and forth a few times, testing how quickly he could hide his glow. He had no interest in being a lighthouse directing the way to delicious manflesh.

Though his manflesh was pretty damn delicious, if he did say so himself. 

Okay, so the way he came in was no good. The boulder had taken at least four men to roll into place and he wasn’t going to last the entire year before they opened it up again for annual happy fun human sacrifice times. He didn’t know the inventor personally, but no engineer that brilliant would have designed something like the Labyrinth without leaving at least one secret exit. Especially considering the tendency displayed by so many kings of rewarding genius with death sentences. 

Just goes to show you should never build a death trap you can’t escape from. 

Onward and inward it was. Tony mentally flipped a coin, shrugged, and put his left hand against the left side of the corridor. The stone felt cool and rough to the touch, scraping gently against the calluses on his fingertips.

He followed the wall for what might have been hours, or days… It was impossible to tell without external references, and even the growling in his stomach was no help; he’d gone days without food before. Or sleep. Tony sat down, back against the wall and legs splayed, as he chewed one of his precious dried fruits. Unsurprisingly, not even hunger could make them taste like anything other than used sandal leather.

At least he had access to all the sleep he could possibly want, if, of course, he could manage to sleep.

As though his body had been waiting for that cue, Tony felt his eyelids drooping as Hypnos decided to forcefully make his presence known.

His last thought before he fell asleep was a nonsensical hope that the monster wouldn’t snore.

***

It was not the first time Tony had woken up with no clear memory of where he was or how he’d gotten there. On the probably up side, he was clothed. On the definitely up side, he wasn’t hung over.

Tony hated mornings. Of course, with no good way to keep track of time in here, he could always just decide it was already evening and see if that helped. Mind over… minding.

“You’re awake,” a voice said, and hearing an unknown voice upon waking? _That_ , at least, had a comforting familiarity to it. 

“Yeah, well…” Tony said, pushing himself into an upright position on the sleeping couch, “It’s not my first chariot race. Or Dionysia, whatever.”

“I found you asleep in one of the tunnels. You’re at the center of the Labyrinth now.” The man appeared slightly older than Tony, with patches of grey in his dark hair and lines of worry on his face, though he moved like a younger man. He wore a heavily patched tunic that bore traces of having once been purple.

The man stared at him briefly before pointing to his left. “There’s food on the table.” And so there was; bread as well as a pitcher he devoutly hoped was full of something other than water. Tony poured some of the liquid into what looked to be the only cup. No such luck.

“No meat?” Tony asked, his mouth full of rather dry bread, so it came out more like “nuh meaa?”

“I, ah, I don’t eat meat.”

“So what’s your name, anyway? And may I just say what a pleasure it is to know I won’t be punched for having to ask.” Tony extended his hand, palm up and empty. 

The man stared at it awkwardly, as though he knew there was a correct response to this action, but had forgotten precisely what it was. Tony was just beginning to think he should give up on the gesture when the man finally reached out and shook his hand.

“Bruce.”

“Well, Bruce, I’m Tony. Nice to meet you.” 

“You slept for about four hours after I found you.”

“That long, huh? How can you… oh gods, you’ve got a clock!” Tony abandoned his half-eaten piece of bread and began examining the mechanism sitting on another of the tables circling the chamber wall. 

“Yeah, I started with a water clock, but that took too much maintenance so I tweaked it a bit.”

Some corner of Tony’s mind noted that this was the first sentence Bruce hadn’t paused or stammered in the middle of. The rest of him was too busy examining the odd device. “This is brilliant! Have you… wait, lead here, I see… and the bronze has iron to compensate for the expansion and contraction…”

“Yeah, it doesn’t matter so much in here, obviously, constant levels of temperature and humidity…”

“...but anywhere else you’d still be able to keep accurate time,” Tony finished, grinning at Bruce. “Genius. Have you considered replacing the stone here with something harder?”

“Something like sapphire, yeah, but I…” Suddenly the distance was back. “I don’t really have the best access to supplies in here.”

“Athena’s tits,” Tony breathed out slowly, “just _think_ what you could do in a proper laboratory space with proper lighting and tools.”

“You shouldn’t say that.”

“What, about her tits? It’s a complement. I’ve been to the Parthenon, they’re lovely. Very… golden ratio, if you know what I mean.” Tony traced their shapes in the air. “Tell you what, we’ll escape the Labyrinth, go visit a few wonders… Skip the gardens, seriously, tourist trap, go back to Athens, overthrow the regent, and once I’ve retaken the throne I’ll fix you up with a decent workspace, all the trimmings, loads of… of natural light, and all the tools and resources you could want. It’ll be fun.”

“I don’t think that’s such a… wait, overthrow?”

“Yeah, politics, what can you do?” Tony smiled again, though this time it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m not exactly here by choice. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Who’d you piss off to get stuck down here, anyway? Sleep with the king’s daughter? Son? Both?” Tony waggled his eyebrows in an exaggerated fashion. “Mess around with something the gods decreed ‘Man Should Not Know’? Don’t be shy, I’ve done most of them. Okay, all of them. In my defense, I was really bored. And drunk. That’s a defense, right? Diminished capacity? Speaking of, do you have anything here that might diminish my capacity? I’m feeling uncomfortably sober.”

“You’re a strange man, Tony,” Bruce said, but there was a tiny smile.

“I prefer ‘eccentric,’” Tony said. “So c’mon, spill.”

Bruce sighed. “I let something out I shouldn’t have.”

“You… it’s something to do with the beast here, isn’t it? They were a little fuzzy on the details on the ship over, just lots of ‘gods’ anger’ this and ‘abomination’ that and ‘can rend apart men and women with its monstrous bare hands and then eat them alive’. Any tips for killing him? Any vulnerabilities, allergies, self-fulfilling prophecies… anything you can tell me about?”

It was tough to be entirely sure in the flickering light of the oil lamps, but Bruce looked as though he’d gone a bit green.

“Why do you need to kill him? Isn’t it enough that they built this Labyrinth, have us trapped in here…”

“Because it… I don’t know… eats people? Bruce, I’m sorry, I don’t know your relationship with it, I’ll assume friendly since your limbs are intact, but when people keep man-eating critters around it Always. Ends. Badly. Look at Diomedes. Though to be fair, the guy was also kind of a dick.”

“The Other Guy doesn’t eat people. He doesn’t even eat meat. He’s safe here. He’s not a threat to anyone.”

“Except for you,” Tony pointed out. “And, well, me now, obviously.”

“He won’t hurt you,” Bruce said calmly. “I won’t let him.”

“What about you?” Because seriously, the guy did not look like he could take anyone in a fight, unless it was with his brain. Tony made a note to self: invent way of fighting with brain. 

Bruce smiled ruefully. “He hasn’t hurt me yet. I just try to… avoid him.”

“Aside from getting you stuck here in here, though I guess that’s sort of a chicken-and-egg, Phoenix-and-the… phoenix sort of deal. Have you even _tried_ to find the secret exit? You haven’t, have you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re a genius,” Tony stated. “You’d have found it.”

“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll help you get out of here if you promise you won’t try to kill him. He’s not a threat to anyone.”

“You swear?”

“On Pythagoras’ theorem, yes.”

“Then okay. Deal. Shake.” They shook hands on it, Bruce’s hands firm and unexpectedly warm in the cool of the Labyrinth. Tony added, “ _And_ you’re coming back with me to Athens.”

“You don’t always get what you want.”

“Correction,” Tony said, poking Bruce in the chest with his finger, “I don’t always get what I want _yet._ ”

Bruce left soon afterwards, saying something about him walking around the Labyrinth to keep the monster in check. Which, hey, didn’t make a whole lot of sense to Tony, but then, it wasn’t _his_ monster. He’d waved him away with a “bye, have fun, don’t get eaten,” which Bruce, to his credit, had only rolled his eyes at and told him to stay put.

Tony could have insisted on going, but he knew what fear looked like, and Bruce wasn’t afraid of the creature. He would have to trust that the man, who, after all, had been successfully not dying here for much longer than Tony, knew what he was doing.

And if that meant having nothing better to do than rummage through Bruce’s living area/workspace/laboratory, he could live with that. 

A tiny sleeping couch and table with one stool sat in a corner of the large room, and the rest was taken up by tables filled with all sorts of odds and ends. Despite the seeming randomness of the items present, which looked as though someone had simply run around grabbing everything within a certain radius, there was a quiet arrangement to the place that spoke of an ordered mind. Stoppered jars that were definitely not full of wine lined one wall; scrolls filled niches along another. Bits of metal were piled on one table next to a half-finished mechanism with a similar internal structure to the clock.

He rubbed his hands together briskly to warm them and got to work.

As easy as it generally was for Tony to lose track of time when he was working, a place with literally no distractions or external reminders of time’s passage meant that he could easily have simply worked until he’d fallen over. Which was actually kind of awesome. Of course, Bruce was likely to be back in under three days, so he couldn’t try to beat his current personal best.

When Bruce did come back, it was to Tony on the floor, fiddling with tiny gears and surrounded by scrolls held open with whatever had been close at hand.

“You’re not much for privacy, are you?”

“Only other people’s,” Tony said cheerfully after spitting out the tool in his mouth. “Your chemical formulas are _brilliant,_ by the way. I can’t wait to try them out.”

“Is that my distilling apparatus?”

“….yes? Oh, wait, was that rhetorical?”

“Are you trying to make _alcohol_ with it?”

“Well, only until I can find something to ferment, I’m a chronic optimist. I’ve also improved the oil lamps. They should stay as bright but use about twenty percent less oil. Give me another day and I can redesign the wicks to take advantage of a new oil formulation based on your work.”

And that, of course, lead to them talking about Bruce’s work, which Tony could have done indefinitely because, hey, the guy was _smart_. It was in his lab and his notes and in the way he could follow Tony’s ideas and even add to them. His knowledge of chemistry and chemical compounds may have even been better than Tony’s, and _that_ was like his birthday come early.

Eventually, though, Bruce began yawning, which led to Tony yawning, which led to Bruce yawning, which led to Bruce saying, “We should maybe get some sleep.”

Tony considered arguing the point, but then _he_ yawned again.

“Fine, fine, hope you don’t steal the blanket,” he said, rising to his feet and walking towards the couch. He sat down and looked back at Bruce, who sat on the stool as if frozen. This time it was Tony who rolled his eyes.

“It’s cold in here and there’s only one couch that is, let’s be fair, hardly big enough for one person. I’m not about to make you sleep on the floor and frankly, first meeting aside, I have absolutely no interest in doing so again, so get over here and bring your excess body heat with you.”

Bruce took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Fine.”

“Oh,” Tony added as they finished the minor bodily shifts necessary to make two grown men fit in a narrow space, “I should warn you, I’m a cuddler.”

True to his word, when Tony woke up it was with an arm curled around Bruce’s torso. But Bruce was the one with his head buried in Tony’s neck, so he figured they were even.

It had been too long a time since he’d shared sleeping space, especially for someone as, let’s say, _friendly_ as himself; after The Cave he hadn’t wanted to see anyone’s reactions to the thing in his chest. It meant he was content, at least temporarily, to just lie there and enjoy the physical contact, ignoring the morning erections both of them were sporting.

Bruce was less inclined to do so, if the way he immediately scrambled to put distance between them was any indication. Of course, since he’d ended up on the side towards the wall, he wasn’t actually able to get very far.

“Watch it there, you’re going to push me off,” Tony groused.

Bruce stilled. “Uh, sorry.”

“Totally natural,” Tony said reassuringly. “I’m guessing it’s been a while for you too?” He let his voice drop lower. “I could help you with that.”

Bruce’s eyes were wide open and his pupils heavily dilated in the faint blue glow of Tony’s chest. Hoping that he was reading the situation correctly, Tony leaned forward and very gently pressed his lips against Bruce’s.

For a second, they were kissing. Then Bruce bolted over Tony, inadvertently elbowing him rather firmly in the gut, and ran for the entrance to the maze.

“Stay put! Don’t follow me!” he yelled as he sprinted out of sight, as though the monster was in here and not out there. 

Tony grabbed a ball of string, tied one end to the table leg closest the exit, and headed out into the labyrinth after him.

“Bruce!” he hissed into the quiet, trying to find some odd, probably nonexistent volume that could somehow be heard by Bruce but not the monster. “Bruce! Dammit! Come back!” 

In the distance, he heard a roar.

He dropped the string and began running in the direction he thought the noise had come from. Fuck, if someone _else_ got killed because of his actions… If _Bruce_ got killed...

Tony came to a halt, panting heavily, when he saw there was something on the floor in front of him. Scraps of what was once Bruce’s tunic littered the ground. In the dim light he couldn’t see if there was blood or not, but there was no way anyone could have been wearing the tunic when it was shredded and not have been injured.

“BRUCE!”

He took off running again, following the trail of scraps as the path split again.

“BRUCE!”

As he turned the corner, he caught a glimpse of something moving in the path ahead. He skidded to a halt. 

The creature was huge, at least nine feet tall, shaped as though someone had taken the form of a man and wrapped layer upon layer of muscle around it until it was almost as wide as it was tall. It turned towards him, eyes shining green in the reflected light, before heading quickly away.

It had a strangely human face.

Tony gave chase, but the monster quickly outpaced him, leaving him out of breath, utterly exhausted, and with no idea where he was or how to get back to the Labyrinth’s center. Bruce might be dead, and there was definitely a monster in there with them.

Tony kept walking.

***

Fingers were held against the pulse point in his neck, then against his forehead, then a hand moved to shake at his shoulder gently. “Tony? Tony, wake up.” 

“Brggghhh,” he responded, not naturally being at his best upon waking. 

“Tony, c’mon, drink.”

Tony felt a cup being pressed to his lips, though sadly, it was only filled with water.

His eyes flew open. “Bruce!”

“We’ve got to quit meeting like this,” Bruce said, his mouth quirked upwards at the corners in a way that would have been a grin on anyone else. 

Tony grabbed Bruce’s arms. “I thought you were… I was _worried._ ”

“Let’s get you back to the workshop,” Bruce said, helping Tony to his feet. With Tony’s arm around Bruce’s shoulder and Bruce’s arm around Tony’s waist for support, Bruce led them unerringly back to the center. At one point Tony thought they had passed the place where he’d seen the bits of cloth, but he couldn’t be sure and there was nothing there now. 

“Bruce, I saw the monster. It was big. And… big. It had hands the size of _sheep._ We need to get out of here.”

He’d almost have thought he’d imagined everything, but Bruce was wearing a different ridiculously worn tunic than the one he’d had on previously. And wasn’t meeting his eyes.

“Look,” Tony said, as Bruce dumped him gently back onto the couch, “Let’s make a deal, I won’t make a pass at you, you won’t run screaming off into the Labyrinth in a way that takes years off my admittedly likely-to-be-short-anyway lifespan. I mean, I’ll be honest, I hadn’t realized my seduction techniques were _that_ rusty.”

“It’s not… It’s not you, it’s me.”

“Wow, we’re already having this conversation?” That might be a new record… no, wait, there was that brunette in Memphis. 

Bruce was looking anywhere but at him. “I’m not very good with emotions.”

“Can’t stand ‘em myself. Look,” Tony said, because conversations dealing with emotions were sort of like dislocated shoulders, best set quickly and then followed with heavy drinking. “I like smart people. And beautiful people. And talented people. Really, I’m just a people person. And I like you, Bruce. You’re brilliant… really, you know how rarely I run into people that can keep up with me, let alone suggest things I haven’t thought of? And you’re easy on the eyes, even if your tunics look older than Kronos. But hey, if it’s not your thing… well, I question your taste, obviously.” 

He smiled, and if it was one of his less sincere ones, at least Bruce hadn’t known him long enough to notice. “Anyway, hands and various other body parts to myself, got it, though we’re still on for nighttime cuddle buddies, because it is _chilly_ in here.”

They looked at each other, and it was awkward, dammit, it was definitely awkward, then Bruce shoved the goblet of water in his face and the eye contact and tension were broken. Tony drained the entire thing before handing it back, being careful not to touch Bruce’s hand in the process.

“Now… if you think it’s safe, can you walk me around the Labyrinth so I can get a feel for the layout? I’d like to progress with the escaping.”

“Sure. Walking. Walking is good.”

“Big fan of walking,” Tony said, pushing himself up off the couch. “Let’s walking.”

Bruce led him slowly around the Labyrinth, Tony talking and peppering Bruce with questions about the monster the entire time. Bruce’s replies alternated between vague and noncommittal.

“You’re telling me no one even knows for sure how _tall_ it is?”

“Strangely enough, no one seems to want to get close to the Other Guy with measuring devices,” Bruce said, showing a flash of what Tony now recognized as a very dry sense of humor. “Usually they’re too busy with the screaming and the fleeing.”

“What about you, _you’re_ not afraid of him, how come you don’t have any data?”

Bruce shrugged. “I’ve, ah, never been in a position to take notes. Come on, there’s another room I want to show you,” he added, leading them off to the right. The narrow doorway ahead matched the one to Bruce’s chamber, making it the second actual ‘room’ Tony had seen inside, the Labyrinth being composed primarily of long curving hallways and dead ends.

“Aaah!” Tony cried, covering his eyes with his hands to block out the light. “What the… it’s _bright_ in here!”

“Yeah, you’ll probably need a minute or two to adjust.” Bruce said, unapologetic. “It’s worth it, though.”

Tony kept squinting as his eyes oh so slowly relearned how to deal with sunlight. “I have become a cave creature, seriously. Argh, so bright, the sun. What _is_ this?”

“You’ll see,” Bruce said, and there was definitely amusement in his voice now.

Tony’s eyes finally finished adjusting to the change in lighting conditions. “It’s a…”

“Not exactly a greenhouse, but that’s the general idea. Water is from an underground aquifer, the sunlight comes in from the outside via a series of mirrors.”

“It’s so bright. And warm.” It felt like standing in the courtyard of his villa on an early autumn afternoon.

“The olives like the heat.”

“And this is how you…”

“It’s not luxury, but it means I can feed myself and keep my lamps burning.”

“Bruce, _this_ is amazing. You’re amazing.” Tony said, gesturing around him. “And I don’t even like plants.” The various plants grew off the ground, suspended in a strange latticework of wires and tubing. “You are just _full_ of surprises.”

Bruce ducked his head down, hiding his expression. “You have no idea.” He looked back up. “Remind me to show you the room at night, I’ve got a sort of camera obscura-based astronomical setup I think you’ll get a kick out of.”

And the warm flush Tony was feeling was from the heat of the room and not Bruce’s expression of pride as he explained the hydroponics, and the glow he was seeing around Bruce was just an optical afterimage related to the sudden brightness, and his hands were definitely shielding his eyes to block the light and not because he was trying really hard not to reach out and kiss Bruce again. 

They made it back to the center room after that, with Bruce insisting they get some sleep after the long day and Tony insisting that no, he was serious about the couch thing, c’mon, it’s chilly, Bruuuuce...


	2. Chapter 2

The next day found Bruce tinkering with his clocks again while Tony began scratching out the Labyrinth’s layout with a stylus. He was definitely not still thinking about how it had felt to wake up to find he and Bruce had apparently been playing big spoon and little spoon last night.

The design was elegant, in a death-trap-y sort of way. Repeating mathematical motifs to determine where it branched out, complex enough to get lost in if you didn’t notice the pattern… 

It was then he had an epiphany.

“I’m an idiot,” Tony announced, absentmindedly tucking the stylus behind his ear. “In a roguishly handsome, genius-y sort of way.” 

“At least you’ve got your modesty,” Bruce said.

Tony stood, and began pacing the room. “I’ve been looking at this from entirely the wrong angle. I’ve been assuming there’s a way out, because it was designed by a genius and they’d want to make sure they _could_ get out in case the king came down with a case of the “dead men tell no tales’.

He stopped and turned to face Bruce. “That’s not true, though, is it? Because _you_ designed it. And you designed it so you _couldn’t_ leave.” If he hadn’t already known he was right, the look on Bruce’s face would have been the final proof.

Bruce swallowed audibly. “How did you know?”

“I’d be a shitty engineer if I couldn’t recognize someone else’s signature in their work. I see your work in here, I see the Labyrinth, that mirror setup in the greenhouse must have been part of the original design, two plus two is four, etc etc. Bruce, what did you do that was so horrible that you built your own damned prison, occupancy you _and a monster_ , then threw away the key?”

“ _I’m_ the monster.”

“Wait, are we talking metaphorically, because I’ve seen it, big, greenish…did I mention big? ‘cause it looked pretty big.”

Bruce took several deep breaths. “That was me.”

“Still not following,” Tony admitted.

“I… I turn into the monster, okay? Same guy,” Bruce pointed both hands at his chest. “Me, him. Him, me.”

“Bruce, you’ve gotta be…”

“You don’t…“ Bruce interrupted, both talking over the other since Tony never really did know when to shut up. “Tony, you have to…”

“I’m just saying, there’s the volume alone to be considered…”

“Tony…”

“And the pigmentation shift, it doesn’t make any…”

“TONY!” And Bruce was in front of him, grabbing him by the shoulders. His eyes looked green. Tony did not remember them being green. Bruce wasn’t allowing him to break eye contact now, and yes, definitely green. Huh.

“Tony,” Bruce said, “Just… take as a working hypothesis that I’m telling the truth. Please.”

“Hypothesis?” Tony repeated.

“ _Testable_ hypothesis.”

“Okay… yeah, I can do that.”

Bruce suddenly seemed to realize where his hands were and pulled them in to his chest protectively as he took a step backwards. “Okay. Great.” He glanced away, then back, and his eyes were definitely brown.

Huh again.

“So…” Tony finally said, “testable?” 

“If I do it right now I’m not going to be in any shape to answer questions afterwards.”

“Bruce, you little minx, you cannot say ‘oh, by the way, Tony, I transform into a giant green creature in defiance of all known laws of nature’ and expect me to sit around idly until you show me.”

“No, because that would imply you could be idle.”

Tony continued to stare at him expectantly.

Bruce rubbed his forehead. “Fine. Okay. Fine. Let’s… we do this my way, okay, or not at all.”

Tony nodded enthusiastically, since technically it wasn’t lying if he didn’t verbally agree.

“Come on, may as well get this over with,” Bruce said, his tone funereal. He turned and headed back out into the maze, Tony jumping up to follow him.

To Tony’s surprise, Bruce stopped him after they’d gone only fifty or so yards.

“Here’s the deal: _I_ am going to transform. _You_ are going to stay there just long enough to watch the start of it, enough to see I’m telling the truth, and then when I tell you to you are going to run back to the room where I won’t be able to get in while I’m… the Other Guy, and you are going to stay there until I turn back.”

Bruce kicked off his sandals and pulled off his tunic, and okay, Tony had not expected that either. 

“Take these back with you,” Bruce said, tossing the items at Tony. “I’m practically out of clothing as it is. And stay there for now. But when I say the word, you _run._ ”

He walked, now completely naked, another few yards down the tunnel. “It would be safer if I was further away, but if it’s too far you’d probably just get closer to get a better view, and I really need you to believe me. And not be inadvertently killed in the process.”

“Killing bad,” Tony agreed, still feeling a bit out of it.

“Alright,” Bruce said, facing away from him and squaring his broader-and-more-muscular-than-they’d-looked-in-the-tunic shoulders. “Let’s… do this.”

Tony knew the stories, of course, of Zeus turning into swans or bulls or whatever the hell would get him laid, or Arachne being changed into a spider, and the gods knew he’d seen enough odd things with his own eyes, but nothing could have quite prepared him for Bruce’s body… rippling. Like bubbles rising to the surface of a boiling liquid, except that these were apparently muscle, and they stayed, distorting his body further and further, and somehow he was bigger, and bigger, and his skin was darkening and green-en-ing, which was not actually a word but needed to be, because no existing words were doing this justice.

Bruce hunched inward as his body distended around him before arching backward, his spine bowing in a way Tony would have said was anatomically impossible before now. Then again, he was pretty sure everything he was seeing was still actually anatomically impossible. He certainly hoped so.

“RUN,” Bruce said, voice rough and low, forcing out the word from between his teeth as though the act of speaking was just as painful as the transformation being forced upon his body.

He turned to face Tony, and it was no longer Bruce, it was the thing from before, ten feet tall and shaped as though by a god with only the vaguest idea of what a human being is supposed to look like and an overfondness for the color green.

Tony had always been brilliant at multitasking, meaning he had at least three different levels of thought in his head all screaming that he should probably flee RIGHT NOW.

However, five were insisting he study the creature more closely, one was continuing to bemoan the lack of alcohol because seriously, this was why exactly the sort of situation for which alcohol was invented…

So really, the problem wasn’t that a smart man would have fled, the problem was that a dumber one would be in the center room by now with heavy things in front of the doorway. 

So okay, maybe Tony was too smart for his own good.

Luckily, at least for right at this very moment, the Other Guy seemed as confused as he was. It closed the distance between them in two steps and stood over him.

Okay, this was fine, no one was dead yet…

It roared.

Lung capacity had definitely expanded exponentially along with everything else.

Finally it stopped, and Tony slowly removed his hands from his ears, where they had proved generally ineffectual at blocking the noise. He opened his eyes to see the creature tilting its head consideringly at him. 

If he squinted a bit… alright, if he squinted a _lot,_ he could see traces of Bruce in its face.

Abruptly, the giant hulking thing turned and began lumbering away. Tony felt a bit insulted. He was also still kind of terrified. Of course, he wasn’t _simply_ terrified. And he was busy enough being all of the other things that Terrified ended up hanging out awkwardly in a corner of Tony’s mind, nursing a drink, next to Hungry, Sleepy, Embarrassed, and a potted plant.

“Hey, Bruce?”

It paused.

“How aware are you right now?”

“Hulk.” If rocks had voices, Tony was pretty sure that’s what they’d sound like.

“Ah. Hi… Hulk. I’m Tony. Bruce’s friend.” He was careful to keep his movements as slow and nonthreatening as possible, even though he couldn’t imagine how anything less than an angry elephant or several could actually _be_ a threat to it.

It lumbered back over and sniffed him. Actually _sniffed_ him. Tony kept talking, because in his experience there was about a fifty-fifty shot he’d improve his situation if he kept talking. “No idea how I smell there, big guy, haven’t really had much of a chance to bathe recently…”

The Hulk picked him up, slung him over his shoulder, and began running down the corridors of the Labyrinth. It was a bumpy ride, a bit like being strapped to the back of a very tall horse. 

Eventually he must have tired of the exercise, because the creature settled down in one of the more open areas where several paths intersected.

Turned out the Other Guy was a cuddler too. And he did snore a bit.

***  
 “You,” Bruce announced much much later, when they’d both gotten up, Bruce now significantly less huge and green, wandered back to the room, and, in Bruce’s case, put on clothing again, “are an idiot.”

Tony snorted. “Oh, like I haven’t been called _that_ before. Repeatedly. Often combined with the throwing of some form of projectile.” 

“You’re reckless, irresponsible…” 

They sat next to each other on the couch not quite touching, leaving Tony feeling oddly content. “...Charming, brilliant, handsome…” he added.

“...with the brains of a statue…”

“To be fair, that one’s new. Are you done yet?”

Bruce continued, so clearly for some bizarre reason he wasn’t. “What were you thinking, sticking around? I told you to _go_!”

“...is that a rhetorical question? I can never tell with those.”

“I could have _killed_ you!”

“But,” Tony said, “you _didn’t._ I think there’s a moral there. The moral being that I’m right.”

“That isn’t a moral.”

“Lesson? Precept? Fable? Jataka?”

“How on earth do you manage to be simultaneously the smartest and stupidest person I have ever met?”

“Wiser minds than… okay, not wiser, but I get that a lot. Anyway, it’s fine. No one was hurt, _I_ wasn’t hurt, seriously, okay, maybe a couple of sore spots because you need to work on your technique, maybe go with piggyback or bridal style next time, and I can now claim to be among the select few who’ve traveled by Hulk. It’s _fine,_ Bruce.”

Bruce took a deep breath and gave up the argument, possibly because he’d realized Tony was right, but more likely because he was as exhausted as he looked. Turning into and out of the monster must take a great deal of energy, not to mention the amount the thing had expended running around the Labyrinth carrying another person.

“Okay,” Tony finally said, ready to get to the interesting part of the conversation, “so in the face of overwhelming evidence, I have decided to accept as a preliminary conclusion that you in fact do somehow turn, temporarily, into a large green monster thing every so often.”

“You’re too kind,” Bruce replied quietly. Completely exhausted and still able to manage sarcasm. Bruce was awesome.

“Which leads to the inevitable follow up question, how the everliving fuck did that happen?”

“I’m not sure you’d understand.”

“The science, definitely, especially if you’re explaining it. The other stuff… try me,” Tony said, unconsciously drumming two fingers against his chest. “I guarantee if the subject is ‘What doesn’t kill you still makes you the ironic victim of your own genius and lack of regard for the consequences’ you will not find a more qualified person in, at minimum, the entire Labyrinth.” He felt obligated to add, “Unless this was more of those ‘turn down a god, get punished for it’ deals, in which case you’re out of luck.”

“Just… don’t interrupt, okay? It’s hard enough to tell without having to repeat myself.” Bruce slumped back against the wall and closed his eyes. “I was a... a scholar, a natural philosopher.  I was offered employment by the king of Crete.  I didn’t care about the money, but he promised me all the support, the supplies, and the staff I could ask for if I would discover a way to... to turn his soldiers into artificial demigods. We were fighting Corinth, and they were getting weapons from the Athenians. He must not have thought there was any other way we could win. 

“It was probably impossible.  But if I could do it... well. So I got to work. I tried herbs, chemicals, distillations, bathing, inhalation, injection, ingestion... We went through so many rabbits and mice we had to begin breeding them ourselves. Funny thing, though... food was still so scarce we’d catch some of the soldiers eating them... eventually all I could do was try to make sure the bodies of the ones most likely to be toxic were incinerated after dissection.

“The king wasn’t happy, and the generals kept pushing for results.. ‘I need warriors,’ he’d say, ‘not bunnies’… kept pushing for me to start testing on the soldiers. I told him we couldn’t spare anyone. I think… I think, in retrospect, he might have been encouraging the soldiers to eat the rabbits, hoping something would happen.

“I was getting desperate. I’d used the king’s money to hunt down and read any scroll or papyrus that seemed even remotely useful, trying to find something I hadn’t thought of yet.

“And then I found something. Barely a rumor. About some tiny village known for its fighters. Supposedly prior to fights they’d perform a ritual at a sacred cave and some or other chthonic deity would temporarily gift them with superhuman strength and berserker rages.

“It was a straw, and I was grasping it.

“It was… chance… we found the village at all. The next closest… they wouldn’t do more than point in its general direction and clutch their amulets. Said the whole place was cursed, no one went there. They wouldn’t, not even for the coin we offered.

“From a distance, the place looked abandoned, just collapsed buildings and overgrown fields. Then we got closer… bodies, everywhere. Just bones by now, disarticulated skeletons. It looked like a battle had taken place, there were marks of violence on some of them. Skulls crushed, ribcages broken. Even the soldiers started looking uneasy.

“One of them eventually found the path to the cave. It was pretty easy to spot once you noticed no vegetation would grow within a hundred feet of the entrance.

“The shrine was mostly intact. Beyond it was a chair carved out of the stone, like the Oracle’s chair at Delphi but bigger. And I realized… at least, I thought that… something in the air there, something could be changing the people who were exposed to the cave for long enough. Beneath the chair was an big opening with a decorative grate over it allowing air to come up from someplace much deeper in the earth. 

“I don’t remember much after that. I remember asking two of the soldiers to pull the grate up so I could get a better look. One of them… he was just a kid... getting too close to the edge of the hole… I think I remember grabbing him and shoving him out of the way. And then falling. The next thing I know I’m in the middle of the village and I’m completely alone. And naked. I ran back to the cave and found the cave entrance… most of the structure… completely collapsed. There was no sign of anyone I’d come there with.

“I hiked back to the next village over. They took one look at me and told me I was cursed too. Wouldn’t let me in the gate. But they offered me anything I wanted if I would just go away.

“I asked them for a spare tunic. And for enough food and water to get back, and for them to tell me about the curse. They said… they said the gods transformed people who went into the cave into monsters, that I was one now. That if I got angry, I’d turn back. Into a… thing. A beast. The word ‘rampaging’ may have been used. I thought they were crazy. Figured I’d just hit my head when the cave collapsed on us, and somehow I was the only survivor.

“Made it back to Crete. I was still having blackouts from the head injury. And every single time I’d wake up naked and alone. Another funny thing… it took us over a fortnight of hard travel to reach the village, but somehow it was only a week’s journey to get back.

“I didn’t exactly get a hero’s welcome. Half a dozen men gone on a fool’s errand, and only one back with nothing to show for it but some crazy story about a cave? The general was yelling for me to be executed immediately, I was a liar, a madman, a traitor, a failure… I was so angry… I had another blackout. Only this time when I came to there were dead soldiers. And a lot less palace. And they told me I’d just… become some sort of huge green monster that had started attacking everything in sight. That I’d killed people. I hadn’t told them anything about the curse. That was when I realized… the villagers had been telling the truth. I _was_ cursed.

“I tried to stay calm, but do you know how hard it is when any strong emotion might be a catalyst? At first just knowing I _had_ to be calm agitated me.”

“Like trying not to think about a purple gryphon,” Tony interjected.

Bruce turned to look at Tony for the first time since he’d begun telling his story. “What?” 

“A purple gryphon.” Tony said. “Well known fact, if you are told not to think of a purple gryphon you will inevitably begin thinking of one. You can’t help it. Human nature. The only way not to…”

“...is to forget you’re not supposed to not be thinking about a purple gryphon,” Bruce finished.

“Exactly.”

They smiled at each other, before Bruce’s expression sobered again. “They wanted me to fight for them. I wouldn’t. They wanted me to tell them where the cave was, and I refused. I’d killed people, Tony, and I don’t remember it. I don’t even know _how many._ And I couldn’t _be_ killed. I jumped off a cliff, the Other Guy swam ashore. Spears just made him angrier. If I stayed near people I was a danger, but if I wandered in the wilderness there was still a chance I’d hurt anyone I came across. 

“Finally, I asked the king to build the Labyrinth. It would keep me… us… contained and isolated. Quarantined. Like an infection.” Bruce spit the last word out. “Big enough the Other Guy could stretch his legs, complicated enough that he couldn’t figure a way out.”

“And the king agreed to having his very own Pandora’s box.” Of course he did.

“What choice did he have?” Bruce asked, resigned. “He couldn’t use me and he couldn’t get rid of me. It was the least worst option. At any rate, I designed it, they built it, and I’ve been here ever since.”

“Bruce, we’re getting you out of here.”

“Weren’t you listening? I _can’t_ leave, Tony, it’s too dangerous.”

“So what, you’ll help _me_ get out, and then next time Crete makes a threat and someone _else_ is thrown in here… I mean, obviously I’m gonna make sure it’s off the table in Athens, at least, once I’m running the place, are you planning to just show up at the gate like a tour guide and lead them through and out the other end?”

Bruce paled. This angle had clearly not yet occurred to him. But then, most people who were really bright about things tended to be less so about people.

Tony continued, relentless. “And what’s going to happen when the people running Crete realize their pet threat-in-a-box isn’t doing what they want it to, which by the way is _killing people,_ you’re actually supposed to be killing me here, just FYI, do you think they’re just going to leave you alone here with your olives? The minute you quit being a political asset you go back to being a dangerous liability.” And Tony knew all about suddenly becoming a liability. “Bruce,” he added, voice low and harsh, “I know you don’t want to be a weapon. I get that, I do. But as long as you’re in here, _you already are._ And they will continue using you as long as you let them.”

Bruce sat up, eyes wide. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

“See, that’s what I’ve been saying. Why does no one ever listen to me...”

“But… I designed the Labyrinth so there isn’t a way out of here. That was the whole _point._ ”

“Oh, there’s still a way out.” Tony said, grinning. “We’re just going to have to _make_ it.” He slung an arm around Bruce’s shoulder reassuringly. “Good thing we’ve got a genius engineer _and_ a genius chemist on hand. How much do you know about sea fire?”

“Incendiary weapon, the making and deployment of which is a carefully guarded secret…”

“...by the Athenian royal family,” Tony said, pointing to himself. “Which is me. So… how’d you like to know the formula?”

“You know the formula?”

“My father _invented_ the formula. And I’m betting we can improve on it.”

***

It was a straightforward plan, as most of Tony’s plans actually were, once you got past the bits where he had to create something that hadn’t previously existed.

(As far as he was concerned, those _were_ the straightforward parts.)

It took roughly two days of intense discussion and a lot of parchment to come up with possible changes to the sea fire to make it concussive rather than simply incendiary.  
Tony, of course, would rather have skipped theory and gone straight to trying to blow things up, but Bruce had quite rightly and even more annoyingly pointed out that they had limited supplies and it would be better not to waste them until they had a better idea of what might actually work.

He was a great deal fonder of Bruce’s other suggestion.

“Okay, you need to touch me more,” Bruce said, body tensed as if waiting for a blow.

“Not that I’m not deliriously happy to hear that, seriously, highlight of my day, but… I thought no touchy on account of no smashy?”

“If I’m going back out there, I need to know I won’t freak out at any human contact.”

“Grope you to help you acclimate? I am all over this.”

Bruce gave him A Look.

“Kidding, kidding, yes, touches but no bad touches, fine.”

And so of course Tony did. So now in between experimenting with chemical compounds (and at one point singeing off part of an eyebrow hey I think it looks dashing quit laughing I mean it Bruce) Tony’s taken every opportunity to grab Bruce’s arm to get his attention, pat his shoulder in agreement, poke him in the side when he’s bored, and has generally been a level of handsy that had traditionally required several goblets of unwatered wine to achieve.

In addition, of course, to the sleeping together.

And it was kinda awesome, because Tony liked Bruce and he liked touching and they really were great combined, but it was sort of awful too, because it was all philos and no eros.

In what was simultaneously both a very long and full few days, and no time at all, the fire was ready.

“If this works,” Tony said, eyeing the lines of flammable liquid running down the corridor, “we’re out.”

“If this doesn’t work, it will probably kill us, and if it doesn’t work _and_ doesn’t kill us, we don’t have enough supplies left to survive in here afterwards,” Bruce added.

“Aww, Bruce, don’t soften it just on my account.” Tony wrapped an arm companionably around Bruce’s shoulders. His smile widened further after Bruce’s body completely failed to tense up at the contact.

“You want to do the honours?”

“No, no, you built it, you get to blow it up. It’s a rule.”

Bruce smiled. “Whatever happens, Tony… thanks. For everything.”

“Aside from the whole kidnapping-and-no-alcohol thing, it’s been fun. Really,” Tony said, and was then surprised to realize he’d meant it. 

The entire structure was now lined with arteries of sea fire, with certain areas boasting additional incendiary clumps like blood clots. If it worked, the initial explosions would create stress points and fracture lines that the second wave would then shatter, controlling and channeling the destruction so that it would break through the thick walls without simply collapsing in on them. Bruce would likely have survived anyway, of course, but the goal was for both of them to do so more or less intact.  
Bruce gently touched the oil lamp to the first line of sea fire, setting it alight. As the fire spread outward, they ran the other direction, back into Bruce’s garden room. Tony grabbed the wet rags they’d laid out in advance, tossing one at Bruce before wrapping the other around the lower half of his own face. 

They sat on the ground, surrounded by light and plants, as the ground around them began to shake. 

Neither could have said who reached for the other’s hand first, but they held on tight as the noise outside the room grew deafening.

By the end, it was hard to imagine that anything in the world could still be standing, but they still waited until an hour had gone by without any further crashing noises.

He’d forgotten how blue the sky was.

“You can go anywhere now,” Bruce said, finally dropping the hand Tony had forgotten he was holding.

“So can you,” Tony pointed out equitably. “Though technically speak...”

Bruce kissed him. If Tony had been expecting a kiss from Bruce, which he hadn’t, he’d probably have guessed it would be gentle, tentative. This, however, was more of a ‘I’ve been dying of thirst and your lips appear to be made of water’ kiss, which, just to be clear, also had Tony’s enthusiastic support, it being a reasonable match for his own feelings on the subject.

Bruce finally pulled back, panting slightly. “You said something about overthrowing a regent?”

“Well, after this, that hardly seems like a challenge…”

Bruce smiled, and it was beautiful. “We can tie one of your hands behind your back.”

“One kiss and we’re already discussing bondage, Bruce? I _approve._ ”

Bruce rolled his eyes, but kept smiling. “Tony, shut up.”

And then he kissed him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the delay! Thanks for reading!


End file.
